Sunday, August 8, 2010

from Another Gardener's Bed-Book, 1933

August 8th...Ancient Nudism. It is all very modern to claim that sun-bathing is a product of our own era, yet the ancient poets were always having their lady loves dance diaphanously across the mead and maidens go out at dawn (I suspect in their night-gowns, as one of our guests did once, to the shocked surprise of a dignified father-in-law) to gather fresh dew for a cosmetic. The modern school of nudist poetry not yet having risen, permit me to quote these two lines of intimate loveliness written by Michael Drayton in the 16th century:

A world to see, yet how he joyed to heare The dainty grasse make musicke with her feete.